“You’re as blind as a bat—­or a man.  Jane loves country life because she’s young and growing; but there’s a subconscious sense which tells her that she’s simply fitting herself to be carried off by that handsome giant, Jim Jarvis.  She doesn’t know it, but it’s the truth all the same, and it will come as sure as tide; and when it does come, her life will be run into other moulds than we have made, no matter how carefully.”

“I wonder where this modern Hercules is most vulnerable.  I’ll slay him if I find him mousing around my Jane.”

“You will slay nothing, Mr. Headman, and you know it; you will just take what’s coming to you, as others have done since the world was young.”

“Well, I give fair warning; it’s ‘hands off Jane,’ for lo, these many years, or some one will be brewing ‘harm tea’ for himself.”

“You bark so loud no one will believe you can bite,” said this saucy, match-making mother.

“How about Jack?” said I.  “Have you settled the moulds he is to be run in?”

“Not entirely; but I am not as one without hope.  Jack will be through college in June, and will go abroad with us for July and August; he will be as busy as possible with the miners from the moment he comes back; he is much in love with Jessie, the Gordon’s have no other child, the property is large, Homestead Farm is only three miles, and—­”

“Slow up, Polly!  Slow up!  Your main line is all right, but your terminal facilities are bad.  Jack is to be educated, travelled, employed, engaged, married, endowed with Homestead Farm, and all that; but you mustn’t kill off the Gordons.  I swing the red lantern in front of that train of thought.  Let Jack and Jessie wait till we are through with Four Oaks and the Gordons have no further use for Homestead Farm, before thinking of coupling that property on to this.”

“Don’t be a greater goose than you can help,” said Polly.  “You know what I mean.  Men are so short-sighted!  Laura says, ’the Headman ought to have a small dog and a long stick’; but no matter, I’ll keep an eye on the children, and you needn’t worry about country life for them.  They’ll take to it kindly.”

“Well, they ought to, if they have any appreciation of the fitness of things.  Did you ever see weather made to order before?  I feel as if I had been measured for it.”

“It suits my garden down to the ground,” said Polly, who hates slang.

“It was planned for the farmer, madam.  If it happens to fit the rose-garden mistress, it is a detail for you to note and be thankful for, but the great things are outside the rose gardens.  Look at that corn-field!  A crow could hide in it anywhere.”

“What have crows hiding got to do with corn, I’d like to know?”

“When I was a boy the farmers used to say, ’If it will cover a crow’s back on the Fourth of July, it will make good corn,’ and I am farmering with old saws when I can’t find new ones.”